Episode Titles: A Space Odyssey

It took me a while to realize that the individual episodes of television shows had titles when I was a kid.  This isn't as nutty as it sounds, because when I was young, my only television listings came from newspapers, and they would print episode synopses, but rarely episode titles.  If the title of an episode didn't appear onscreen at the start, I didn't know that it existed.  I knew cartoons mostly had titles, because they would run with a title card.  I knew that "The Twilight Zone" episodes had titles - Rod Serling would sometimes use them in the introductions.  But all the episodes of "Mr. Belvedere" had titles?  And "The Golden Girls"?  And "Murder She Wrote"?  

Onscreen episode titles were actually more prevalent in the past, but started to disappear in the '80s and '90s, especially when networks started shaving time off of shows to make more time for commercials.  Eventually I got my hands on TV Guides and entertainment publications that would list all of those unknown episode titles, and they were pretty accessible if you knew where to look for them.  Once the internet came around, the information became common knowledge.  For a few years, though, I was making up my own titles for episodes of shows like "The Simpsons."  I would put together my own episode guides for cartoons back then, before the official ones were really a thing.  I remember many official titles for comedies and sitcoms being very pun-based, and I didn't get most of them.     

In the streaming era, it's hard to imagine a time when the episode titles weren't available.  They're part of the way we navigate our viewing choices and talk about our shows.  However, it doesn't feel like most people actually use them casually.  You talk about the episode of "The X-files" with the leech man instead of "The Host."  Or, you talk about the episode where Lucy Ricardo sold Vitameatavegamin instead of "Lucy Does a TV Commercial."  There's still kind of an inside baseball quality to knowing the episode titles for certain shows, and many are rife with in-jokes and references.  Most episode titles of "Friends" start with "The One With…" or "The One Where…"  The first two seasons of "Hannibal" named its episodes after French and Japanese cuisine. "3rd Rock From the Sun" is all about the Dicks.  "Mr. Robot" used programming syntax and computer status codes.  However, it's "Person of Interest" that has an episode that's literally titled "/," also known as "Root Path."

I still feel like the only people who really use episode titles are either critics or committed fans - the type who are going to make Top Ten lists, or speculate about who's getting the Emmy.  In some cases the titles are so unwieldy, they're clearly not meant for casual use.  "Orphan Black" took its titles from phrases out of Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species" and other texts, resulting in installments like "Nature Under Constraint and Vexed," "Transgressive Border Crossing," and "Variable and Full of Perturbation."  Then there's "Rick and Morty," which seems committed to cramming the main characters' names into the titles as awkwardly as possible.  The last Christmas episode was called "Ricktional Mortpoon's Rickmas Mortcation."  I feel like the only time we ever discussed episode titles as a culture was that time "Breaking Bad" snuck a spoilery secret message into the episode titles of the second season.  That was fun.

As a viewer, I don't think episode titles are necessary for many scripted shows.  I admit there are a couple where I remember episodes by season and episode number, or even airdate, before I'll think of the actual title.  Older shows like "Full House" and "Dallas" put almost no thought into episode titles because no one except those involved with the productions would ever see them.  Most were very basic and descriptive, like "Anniversary" or "Summer Vacation."  Even now, "Law & Order: SVU" episodes have very simple titles like "Intersection" and "Bad Things," because hardly anyone uses them as identifiers.  The few remaining daytime soap operas don't even bother with titles - episodes are only numbered.            

It's a good sign, however, when you do see them come up in conversation.  I know "The Constant" is the best episode of "Lost" even though I've never seen "Lost."  Sometimes you can bring up "Ozymandias" or "The Suitcase" or "The View From Halfway Down" without bothering to clarify which shows they came from.  I take it as a good sign that we're taking television more seriously as a medium, and it's making more of a cultural impact.  Episodes are less interchangeable, and being singled out more often.  And of course recap culture, reaction culture, and how we watch TV shows have changed immensely.  As for episode titles, they're still not important to some shows, but others like "Stranger Things" and "Doctor Who" are doing title drops as part of new season hype.

I honestly never thought I'd see the day.

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"Guardians" Finally Won Me Over

I've liked the "Guardians of the Galaxy" films less than most MCU fans, though I still find them pretty enjoyable.  I think I've figured out why that is.  Though I like the individual characters, the "Guardians" stories up until this point have always been centered around Chris Pratt's Star-Lord.  It turns out the proceedings are vastly improved if you lean more on the ensemble, and shift the focus over to Nebula or Drax or the Guardian who has been largely confined to grumpy comic relief up until this point - Rocket Raccoon.

"Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" is really Rocket's movie.  He's injured early in the film and spends most of it comatose, but extended flashback sequences show us his horrible past as one of the experiments of the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji), a cruel scientist who likes playing God.  The High Evolutionary has created and destroyed many species and whole civilizations, including the gold Sovereign people from the last "Guardians" movie.  In a subplot, the Sovereign leader Ayesha (Elizabeth Debicki) has created a new superbeing, Adam Warlock (Will Poulter) to be the Guardians' newest enemy, but Adam has a lot of growing up to do.  The High Evolutionary is the real big bad, and he wants Rocket back no matter what the cost.

The Guardians roster is mostly the same from the last "Avengers" movie, but Thor left to be in his own movies again, and the alternate version of Gamora has joined up with the Ravagers, leaving Star-Lord in a funk.  Kraglin (Sean Gunn) is now a full member, and they also picked up a psychic Soviet cosmonaut dog, Cosmo (Maria Bakalova) somewhere around the "Guardians" holiday special.  In their quest to save Rocket, the Guardians travel to some new places, including the headquarters of one of the High Evolutionary's companies, Orgocorp, which is made of entirely fleshy organic matter, and Counter-Earth, which is a copy of Earth inhabited by anthropomorphized animals.  

Everything looks fantastic.  I've always appreciated that the "Guardians" movies are willing to be more weird and cartoonish, letting the designs get really outlandish.  We meet security guards dressed in armor that seems to be made of spongy flesh formations, and alien critters like the fuzzy Blurp and extremely toothy Abilisks.  The High Evolutionary's experiments get grotesque to the point of being upsetting.  In Rocket's flashbacks, there are a trio of other experiments who were Rocket's friends - an otter named Lylla (Linda Cardellini), a walrus named Teefs (Asim Chaudhry), and a rabbit named Floor (Mikaela Hoover), who have all been modified into cyborgs.  Those who are sensitive to cruelty to animals should approach this movie with caution.  All the "Guardians" have skewed more adult, but there's some serious nightmare fuel in this one.  

Maybe that's why the rest of the film is generally  more upbeat.  Since this is James Gunn's last MCU outing for the foreseeable future, things come to a definite conclusion with a round of goodbyes.  Several characters get to grow up a bit, and we get some nice resolutions to ongoing issues.  I especially like how Nebula and Gamora were handled, and Star-Lord really does seem to work better as a supporting character.  All the things you want from a summer blockbuster are here - big crazy action scenes, plenty of one-liners and banter, and spectacle that only a lot of expensive CGI could accomplish.  However, it's also rewarding on an emotional level for fans who have stuck with these characters for the better part of a decade.  Great hallway fight, but a crying Nebula just gets to me more.          

Despite everything, the Guardians have grown on me.  I'm sure that they'll be back in some form or another, but for now I'm glad that they got to go out on such a high note.  This is the best MCU film we've had in a while, not just because it's another rare good ending, but because it's so committed to doing right by each and every one of its characters, from Rocket and Star-Lord to  Adam Warlock.  I understand why James Gunn was so keen on getting this movie made, and why Disney un-fired him to make it happen.  This one was worth the wait.  

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"The Muppets Mayhem" Gets it Right

I've lost count of the number of Disney-backed Muppet projects over the last few years.  Many have been creative and energetic, but none of them quite managed to figure out how to translate the charms of the old gang into the modern era.  Now, a rock mockumentary series featuring The Electric Mayhem is having its turn, and this is easily the best Muppets project since the last two theatrical movies.  Dr. Teeth (Bill Barretta), Floyd (Matt Vogel), Janice (David Rudman), Zoot (Dave Goelz), Lips (Peter Linz), and Animal (Eric Jacobson) look and sound better than ever, and benefit from getting some time in the spotlight away from the rest of the Muppet gang. 

The band is a classic group of zany weirdos who work best as supporting characters, so most of the story actually revolves around Nora Singh (Lilly Singh), a human junior executive at a fading record label, run by the elderly Penny Waxman (Leslie Carrara-Rudolph).  One day Nora discovers that the Electric Mayhem, who famously never recorded a record, owe their label a first album.  So she tracks them down, and with help from her sister Hannah (Saara Chaudry), ex JJ (Anders Holm), and Mayhem superfan Moog (Tahj Mowry), manages to steer the band towards finding their place in the modern music industry.  Well, sort of.  Along the way there's a lot of music, a lot of cameos, and a lot of fond memories to share. 

Culturally, this feels like the right angle to approach the Muppets from in 2023.  After all, there are some musical stalwarts from the '70s who are still out there touring year after year.  The Electric Mayhem prove there's plenty of life left in the groovy felt songsters, not to mention a lot of untapped potential.  We get flashbacks to how the key members of the band got together, there's some inter-band conflict, and when Lilly introduces them to the internet and social media, it turns out to be an incredibly bad idea.  Best of all, there's no real updating of the characters.  Animal is still a walking id.  Janice is still a woo-woo earth mother.  Zoot is still oblivious.  I wasn't familiar with Lips, the unintelligible trumpet player who apparently joined the band in the last season of "The Muppet Show" and hasn't been seen much since, but he's great.  These characters still work fine in the modern day, get plenty of laughs, and even nail some poignant moments.

As a music industry spoof, "The Muppets Mayhem" is very, very mild stuff in keeping with the intended family audience.  The band is weird, but relentlessly upbeat and optimistic.  There is one episode where everyone gets high, but the bad trip is due to expired marshmallows, not any kind of illegal substances.  Nora and the other human characters are sitcom creatures - very cuddly and sympathetic - and their problems are easily solved by direct communication and lucky happenstance.  Nora is such an underdog her life is actually about as unstable as the band's, and she has a lot of life lessons to learn on the path to the music career she wants.  She acts as the Kermit stand-in on the show, a lone voice of reason trying to herd the Mayhem members toward some semblance of professionalism.  Lilly Singh gamely plays the material straight, and is able to carry the show fairly well.  This is the first thing I've seen her in, and she's perfectly lovely and watchable.  If "Muppets Mayhem" featured no muppets, but only her and Tahj Mowry trying to break into the music industry, I think it could still work.

As with all Muppet media, there's a deluge of cameos and guest stars, many from the music industry.  It's an incredibly eclectic bunch, from Cheech and Chong to Charlemagne tha God, and the show consistently uses them in very silly ways.  My favorite was in the social media episode, where the Mayhem accidentally start beef with just about every other music star, angering their fandoms.  The angry convergence of the Swifties, the Beyhive, Beliebers, and Little Monsters is hilarious, and features several good blink-and-you-miss-it appearances.  Or there's the bit where Deadmau5 shows up for a quick visual gag, that involves everyone wearing versions of his famous mouse mask - which immediately goes completely wrong.  

As for the music itself, it's very nostalgic and very kid-friendly.  Probably the best new track is the show's theme song.  Not for everyone, of course, but at the very least, the new album has gotten the Mayhem properly on a Billboard chart or two for the first time in their long careers.          

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"The Mandalorian," Year Three

Mild spoilers ahead.

It's amazing how fast a show can go from something special to something exasperatingly rote and overly familiar.  The irony is, "The Mandalorian" is being more ambitious this year, putting Din Djarin and Grogu squarely in the middle of Bo-Katan's quest to retake the Mandalorian homeworld.  I'm usually all for adventure shows taking big steps like this, and abandoning the status quo, but I didn't need or want the show to get more epic and interconnected with the rest of the "Star Wars" universe.

Unfortunately, now I've got to remember all these characters from multiple seasons of the show, care about the Mandalorians and their politics, and take an interest in what's going on with the remnants of the Empire.  There's a whole episode that is mostly spent setting up a new villain, ex-Imperial Elia Kane (Katy M. O'Brien), that feels like something out of "Andor."  This is all very familiar, but very un-"Mandalorian."  I liked the show in its first season because it was simple and uncomplicated.  Unlike the rest of "Star Wars," it was small stakes and episodic, heavy on the creatures and the action scenes.  A four year-old could follow it without much trouble.  

This season, the show has a ton of ongoing plot, much of it being deployed too quickly for my tastes.  It's the most "Star Wars"  "The Mandalorian" has ever been, but I don't think this does the show any favors.  First, our hero has to travel to Mandalore to undo his apostasy.  Then there's the reuniting with the other Mandalorians, gathering forces, building Bo-Katan back up as a leader, uncovering a secret villain, and finally taking back the planet.  Many of these developments happen very quickly, and frankly aren't as well set up as I'd have liked.  There's an awful lot of convenient timing and ignoring difficult questions.  Another episode or three would have been a big help in terms of pacing and character-building.  

Keep in mind that the most important episodes about Din Djarin and Grogu's relationship were used to fill out the "Book of Boba Fett" series that aired last year.  Anyone who skipped that show will be very puzzled as to why the two characters are reunited at the beginning of this season of "The Mandalorian."  This ties into my larger issues with the story choices in season three.  I simply don't care about Bo-Katan and the Mandalore storylines that were introduced in other "Star Wars" media, notably the animated shows shepherded by Dave Filoni.  I didn't watch them and have no desire to watch them.  "The Mandalorian" is essentially being used to provide a hurried conclusion for a bunch of these older plots.  If they had been set up properly in "The Mandalorian" itself, and given compelling stakes, I wouldn't have minded so much, but they aren't.  My favorite episodes of the season wound up being the one-offs, like the episode spent saving Nevarro and Carl Weathers from alien pirates, and the guns-for-hire episode featuring Jack Black and Lizzo in minor roles.

A fourth season of "The Mandalorian," is currently being planned, but the third season actually ends in such a way that it could serve as a series finale.  And if this is the end of the adventures of Lone Mando and Cub, I have incredibly mixed feelings about the show.  "The Mandalorian" has done a lot to expand the "Star Wars" universe and move away from the Skywalker drama, but there's so much more uncharted territory I would have liked to see explored.  We still have no idea what species Grogu and Yoda are.  There are still all sorts of unanswered questions about Din Djarin.  I think I would have actually preferred the bittersweet ending of season two for a finale, because it would have left things more open ended.  The big victory of season three feels oddly hollow, maybe because it feels like a forced happy ending and doesn't seem earned.

          

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The State of the Fake Shemp

Long ago, in 1955, Shemp Howard of the Three Stooges passed away, leaving the remaining Stooges to fulfill their contracts for four more Three Stooges shorts by using stand-ins, reused footage, and clever editing to cover up the fact that they were a Stooge short.  The use of a "Fake Shemp" (a term coined by Sam Raimi)  has become commonplace in Hollywood over the years, though the techniques have become more refined over time.  In the CGI age, studios now use digital doubles to resurrect the deceased or absent stars - examples include Oliver Reed in "Gladiator," Paul Walker in "Furious 7," Harold Ramis in "Ghostbusters: Afterlife," and Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher in "Rogue One."  

Nobody seems to have much of a problem when Fake Shemp techniques are used to finish up projects that late actors had already agreed to do.  However, when it comes to resurrecting the dead onscreen later on, things tend to get controversial.  Back in 1997, Dirt Devil created a commercial with footage from 1951's "Royal Wedding," that made Fred Astaire appear to be dancing with a vacuum cleaner.  Many, including Astaire's daughter, were critical of the ad and its possible implications for Astaire's legacy.  Subsequently we've had Audrey Hepburn selling chocolate, Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor selling Volkswagens, and a few Beatles resurrected to promote the Beatles edition of Rock Band.  And as technology has improved, we're starting to get some full digital recreations of these celebrities acting in ways they never could have in real life.  Sometimes it looks a little odd, and sometimes it's downright creepy.  Seeing Gene Kelly's famous "Singin' in the Rain" number updated with hip-hop moves looks bizarre.

It's only very recently that the technology has improved to the point where these digital doubles can be used to create anything resembling a full performance.  In the 2000s, we had Lawrence Olivier as the villain in "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" and Marlon Brandon in "Superman Returns," but these appearances were achieved by manipulating existing footage, and were very, very limited.  The roles were also very minor, so no one put up much of a fuss.  Deepfakes and digital de-aging have allowed younger versions of Samuel L. Jackson and Mark Hamill to show up in "Captain Marvel" and "The Mandalorian" respectively, with the full cooperation and participation of those actors.  However, we're a long way off from the fantasies of totally simulated or recreated actors from movies like "S1m0ne," and "The Congress."  At this point, putting a different actor in makeup and prosthetics, like Robert Carlyle as John Lennon in "Yesterday," will still achieve better results.  And it's certainly cheaper.   

However, I expect that fully digital performances are an inevitability, given enough time and money.  We're not quite there technologically, but we're getting closer.  Digital doubles have been around long enough now that we're used to seeing them in many contexts.    It's already been proven that more complex resurrections can be done, and in a few cases it's actually been planned for.  Majel Barrett was recently heard voicing the Enterprise computer again in episodes of "Picard."  She'd recorded a library of phenomes before her death in 2008, so that future "Star Trek" installments could continue to use her voice.  Actors for big blockbusters are regularly getting full body scans of themselves done so that digital artists can plug them into fight scenes and special effects sequences, and it's not so hard to imagine that image rights in perpetuity are just around the corner.  I'm sure Marvel has enough digital assets to put Chadwick Boseman back on our screens in some form, but right now nobody wants that.  

In the future, who knows?  Public sentiment, more than anything else, determines when the use of a digital double is acceptable.  Even with Harold Ramis's family supporting the venture, the extremely well rendered digital Egon in "Ghostbusters: Afterlife" had plenty of detractors.  If actors themselves get fully onboard with the idea, attitudes may change.  However, there are always people who are going to find the idea of digital resurrections unappealing, no matter how good they look.  

My own feelings remain decidedly mixed.  It's exciting that the technology is improving, but like so many other things, the implications are messy and the industry is almost certainly not ready for it.  Like everything else in the digital toolbox, it's great when used respectfully and terrible when it's not.  I'd love to see Shemp Howard onscreen again, reunited with the Stooges.  But if it's for the purposes of selling car insurance or crypto?  I shudder at the thought.     

      

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Identifying With "American Born Chinese"

I never read Gene Luen Yang's "American Born Chinese" comic, but the Monkey King and I go way back.  There have been attempts to depict him in American media before, usually with pretty poor results.  In Asian media, however, he's everywhere.  I'd be worried about how Chinese viewers would react to the show's version of Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, except that he's been reinterpreted and remixed into so many different versions over the years - including Goku from "Dragonball" - that I doubt this version will make much of an impact.  "American Born Chinese" isn't for a Chinese audience, after all, but seems aimed squarely at second and third generation Asian-Americans.  Like me!

Jin Wang (Ben Wang) is a Chinese-American teenager trying to fit in with his mostly white classmates when a new Taiwanese student named Wei-Chen (Jimmy Liu) transfers to his high school.  The two become friends, but Jin has trouble reconciling his desire to conform with embracing his Chinese heritage, and Jin's friendship with Wei-Chen often clashes with his desire to look cool to his Caucasian friends and his crush Amelia (Sydney Taylor).  His home life is also in crisis, as his mother Christine (Yeo Yann Yann) and father Simon (Chin Han) have been arguing over work and finances.  Wei-Chen, however, won't give up on Jin.  It turns out that he's secretly the son of the legendary Monkey King (Daniel Wu), and stole his father's magic staff in order to find a missing, powerful artifact.  And he's sure that Jin can help guide him to it.

"American Born Chinese" is a very YA affair.  A big chunk of time is spent on high school drama, as Jin deals with an embarrassing social media post, winning a place on the soccer team, and juggling priorities. At times it feels very similar to the MCU series "Ms. Marvel," except that it treats Jin's identity struggles more seriously, and the underlying mythology of its fantasy characters is much, much stronger.  Several familiar Asian actors make appearances, including most of the cast of "Everything Everywhere All at Once."  Michelle Yeoh plays the Goddess of Mercy, Guanyin, who looks after Wei-Chen on Earth as his self appointed Auntie.  Ke Huy Quan plays Freddy, a stereotypical Asian character from an '80s sitcom, who has become a popular internet meme.  Stephanie Hsu and James Hong show up in smaller parts, along with Ronnie Cheng, Poppy Liu, Jimmy O. Yang, and Leonard Wu as our villain, the Bull Demon King.  The tone is kept very light and very fun, and there's a big martial arts fight in nearly every episode.  

The show's Chinese bona fides are pretty good.  There's a lot of dialogue in Mandarin Chinese, and I watched these scenes without subtitles, just because I could.  I was happy to find that these parts of the series were completely comprehensible to me, though the accents of the actors vary greatly, because the cast is so international.  There's an entire episode that retells the story of the Monkey King sneaking into the Royal Banquet, but framed to emphasize his friendship and falling out with the Bull Demon King.  If you actually know how the events are supposed to play out from "Journey to the West," it's a little eyebrow raising, but doing the whole thing like an installment of a chintzy '70s television serial, with the costumes to match, mostly makes up for it.  And I'm glad they included this episode, because the rest of the time the Monkey King is acting like a stern father, instead of the naughty hellraiser he's always been in the stories.    

           

The best parts of the show, however, are about Jin's parents.  I loved seeing their dynamic and especially their mismatched mindsets about how to approach getting ahead in life.  It hits close to home for me, and is something I've rarely seen addressed in Western media.  I also liked the way Jin's issues with his identity are addressed.  There's not much direct bullying going on at school, but there is a lot of pressure not to stick out, lots of ignorant insensitivity, and constant hits to Jin's self-esteem.  In one episode Jin chooses to smooth things over rather than call out the person who made him a laughingstock online, disappointing Wei-Chen and other friends who stand up for him. The situation is complex, and while Jin can be seen as taking the easy way out, he's not wrong to want to defuse the messy situation either.        

Eight episodes doesn't feel like enough time to cover everything going on in the show, and the fantasy material feels especially shortchanged.  Unless you're already familiar with "Journey to the West" and other Chinese mythology, you'll almost certainly run into some confusion over who all these strange characters are, and how they relate to each other.  Then again, the show's target audience likely knows exactly who everyone is already.

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This Year's "Peter Pan and Wendy"

David Lowery made one of the better recent Disney remakes with "Pete's Dragon," so I had some expectations for "Peter Pan and Wendy."  We've had several takes on this story over the last few years, but mostly revisionist versions like "Pan" and "Wendy."  There hasn't been a film that's really done a straight adaptation since PJ Hogan's "Peter Pan" twenty years ago.  Lowery makes his own changes to the story and does away with some of the familiar traditions, like having Hook and Mr. Darling played by the same actor, but this is at least as faithful a retelling of the J.M. Barrie original as anything Disney ever did.

The biggest change is that Wendy (Ever Anderson) is the main character throughout, and she's much more active in the story.  There's more emphasis on Wendy dealing with her reluctance to grow up, and she's on equal narrative footing with Peter Pan (Alexander Molony), except in the action and fight sequences.  And there are plenty of those, with a very mean, nasty Captain Hook (Jude Law) and much nicer Smee (Jim Gaffigan) leading the pirates.  To modernize the story further, the Lost Boys are no longer only boys, Tiger Lily (Alyssa Wapanatâhk) is a friendly badass warrior girl, and Tinkerbell (Yara Shahidi) is not jealous of Wendy - because Wendy and Peter's budding romance is mostly absent.    

I've seen plenty of complaints about these changes, mostly from existing "Peter Pan" fans who aren't happy about some of the omissions. This is understandable, because there are some scenes and familiar lines that are recreated very faithfully from the Barrie play and the animated cartoon "Peter Pan," while others are totally original.  Hook's backstory and motives have been overhauled, so that he and Peter were actually friends in the past.  There's also much less emphasis on spectacle, aside from a few major sequences.  You have the first flight with Big Ben, a single appearance by the crocodile at Skull Rock, and a big finale with the flying pirate ship.  All of these are executed wonderfully, and deliver some thrills.  

But because this is David Lowery, Neverland is a more melancholy, less inviting place.  Many scenes take place at night, and the atmosphere is frequently dark and gloomy.  It's odd that the happiest section of the film is at the beginning, before Peter takes Wendy and her brothers (Joshua Pickerint, Jacobi Jupe) to Neverland.  Once they get there, there's plenty of action, but wonder is in short supply.  The visuals certainly look impressive, but the production also feels strangely small.  Tiger Lily is apparently the only indigenous person on the island, and we only get a glimpse of mermaids.  There's plenty of pixie dust and a few songs in the mix, but this feels like a film that's doing the absolute minimum to appeal to the tastes of the usual Disney crowd.  It's doggedly its own animal, with its own aims and its own point of view, and I appreciate that immensely.      

Parents should be a little concerned about the intensity level for younger audience members.  Jude Law is a lot of fun here, but scarier than most Hooks.  The rest of the cast ranges from great to passable.  The adults, which include Alan Tudyk and Molly Parker as the Darling parents, are all fully committed.  Gaffigan as Smee works so well, I'm astounded no one's tried it before.  Ever Anderson is excellent  as Wendy, and is easily the strongest performer among the kids.  Alexander Molony is more subdued than the usual Peter, but he's also one of the few that I've seen make the thimble scene work.  The only performance I found really lacking was Tinkerbell, because Yara Shahidi simply isn't given much to do.  Tinkerbell being changed from a jealous rival doesn't bother me much, but her total lack of character otherwise is a major misstep.     

  

On the other hand, I like how Wendy was fleshed out, especially how her happy thoughts are tied into her ultimate decision to leave Neverland.  And I like how the rivalry between Peter and Hook is resolved in the end.  "Peter Pan and Wendy" is far from the best "Peter Pan" film, but it's considerably better than the bulk of Disney's live action remakes, though the more ardent Barrie and Disney fans may disagree.

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